


It Isn't Much But It's All I've Got

by A_Dassa



Series: I-3 [3]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Canon Trans Character, F/F, F/M, Gen, Multi, OTP: Karnesworth - Freeform, Trans Character, Trans Female Character, karnesworth - Freeform, looking back
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-26
Updated: 2020-01-26
Packaged: 2021-02-27 04:48:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,737
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22411276
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/A_Dassa/pseuds/A_Dassa
Summary: She’s heard all the stories, not just about her unit, but about the other transgender people, and all of them die.  Judith survives.  This is her legacy, she thinks, her final and most bittersweet revenge: she survives, outlives Karina and Claire and Michael, survives Martin and Deanna Karnes, even outlives Connor.  She sips her vodka and pokes a long, needly middle finger into the sky.
Relationships: Karina Karnes/Claire Juarez, Karina Karnes/Connor Falsworth, Karnesworth, Original Female Character/Original Female Character, Original Female Character/Original Male Character
Series: I-3 [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1346581
Comments: 1
Kudos: 2





	It Isn't Much But It's All I've Got

Judith grows old. It’s ironic, she thinks, that she’s the last to die: she’d intended to die at sixteen, after exacting revenge on her father. She’d expected to fall, lifeless, just after swinging a sword through his neck, the way that a tragic Shakespearean hero dies next to his nemesis. His body would collapse and so would she, and they would lie there together, both unforgivable in their own way.

But she doesn’t. Instead, the I-3 troops find her, and she tries to bat them away but it takes too much energy. And the bleeding stops, and her broken arm is reset, and before she can gather the strength to mumble a protest, she’s loaded into a helicopter and shuttled to a hospital.

What happens to an avenger who’s completed their revenge?

Judith wants to die that day, but I-3 doesn’t let her. They keep her alive, she knows, because she’s  _ theirs _ now: this is the devil’s bargain she made to get back at her father. They gave her this one thing, this revenge-- and now, for the rest of her life, she belongs to them. 

When she recovers, they hold more things over her head: they promise her surgery, they promise her hormones, all in exchange for her service.  _ After  _ is the operative word: she’ll get hormones  _ after  _ she starts her unit. Surgery  _ after _ a year of work. It’s telling, she thinks, that they just assume she wants these things. The truth is that she hasn’t thought about it: she’d planned on dying before she had the chance to transition.

But, as she’s recovering in her hospital bed, she finds herself looking forward to hormone therapy. She imagines what her body might feel like, and she thinks that maybe it can be her final act of revenge, to be happy. To be solid. To be everything her father said she would never be.

And so she begins working, putting together a plan for her own future. She uses I-3’s resources to scrub any hint of her old name off the internet and government records. It’s surprisingly easy, but then Corporate tells her that she can’t just be nameless in their systems.

She’s called herself  _ Judith  _ for years now, after a folk tale her mother used to tell her. But Corporate needs a surname too, and this proves harder. Her family name is too heavy on her tongue, carries too much weight with it. Half as an inside joke with herself, she chooses Otvazhny, Russian for  _ brave, daring, intrepid.  _ Judith the Brave. She’s been brave enough to forge her own life, to choose her own name. This is what she chooses.

They promised her she’d get to pick who she works with, and she holds them to that promise. She demands to fill her team with people like her-- talented, scrappy, young.

She kicks and pulls and insists that, as long as she’s I-3’s attack dog, she’ll attack her way. She tests every limit, pushes all the envelopes. Makes demands, some of them completely unrealistic, all to find out how much leeway she has.

She picks Claire first. Claire Juarez is the star pupil of the Legacy Cadet program, a natural martial artist with a flair for impromptu chemistry. Her file notes that she’s been asking for a field assignment since she was eight. It’s not a hard decision, and the interview makes it even easier: Claire impresses Judith immediately, and by the end of the day all the paperwork is done and Claire is the first Legacy Cadet to earn an elite-class assignment straight out of the academy.

But Judith knows that she and Claire can’t complete a unit. They’re too jumpy around each other, and neither of them is particularly good at communicating with the general public. Judith is too blunt, Claire too bubbly. So Judith goes on a search for a stabilizing agent: a diplomat and a psychologist, someone who’s good with people and also excellent in the field.

That’s where she finds Karina Karnes. Her information is slightly mis-filed, as if to hide her from prying eyes. She’s the same age as Claire but not a Cadet, instead training at home with her father. Judith guesses-- correctly, as it later turns out-- that her father has intentionally tweaked her form, hiding her, making it more difficult to snatch her into an assignment. But Judith demands her by name, partially to test the corporate response. But, Judith allows herself to admit, she’s also intrigued by Karina: she’s obviously well- trained, has dozens of certifications under her belt, even a confirmed kill at age nine, yet her file is almost empty. The only crumb of personal information is damning: Karina is a ticking time bomb, a limbic system ready to shred her memory under stress. She is a bundle of frayed nerves, second-guessing her own shockingly accurate perceptions. Too much, Judith thinks. Karina is too much. She can’t possibly stabilize this volatile mix that she’s concocted, not while she herself is radioactive.

So Karina comes in for her interview, and Judith is ready to test her and send her away: after all, pulling her in was an exercise, a statement. But she walks in the room and Judith is intrigued by her soft smile, her pale skin, the way she picks at the blackheads on her nose when she thinks Judith’s not looking. Judith thinks that she and Claire might be able to center Karina while Karina, in turn, centers them: Judith and Claire could reassure her, and Karina might serve as the heart to Judith’s head and Claire’s hands.

Karina seals the deal by mentioning that she has practice overseeing hormone therapy. A psychologist and a medic, Judith thinks, huffing a little. After all, it would be nice-- comfortable, she thinks-- to have someone else carry some of the weight of her transition. 

So she’s on the permanent roster.

Judith has her unit, and Corporate starts her on estrogen. She tries pills, patches, and creams but none feel right: she hates the way the pills taste, they float in her mouth and gag her when she tries to swallow. She scratches the patches off and flat-out refuses to use the cream. Her skin, after all, is rawhide, is armor: it’s not meant to be treated gently, to be rubbed with lotion. Her skin is meant to crack and peel. So she persuades-- no, bullies-- a doctor into prescribing her estrogen via injection. It feels more appropriate, feels like she must be  _ brave _ to puncture her own skin, to stab herself with sharp metal, to squeeze the hormone into herself. Judith will never be soft. She knows this. So she refuses to be soft to herself.

Then there’s the issue of their office. Claire’s fresh out of the academy and Judith’s technically homeless, so Judith just assumes that they’ll set up shop in Karina’s hometown. Missouri’s not so bad, she thinks, when Karina points out the underground complex her father’s built behind their house. It’s clear that Martin Karnes has spent a small fortune on this iceberg building for his daughter: he’s built a hidden elevator that tunnels its way down to a shooting range, armory, library, lab, and emergency bunker. Karina tells Judith, softly, tentatively, her expansion plans: an office nestled in the treetops, with a mirrored exterior, to make it virtually invisible to the human eye. Two conference rooms, a kitchen, and three offices. Judith and Claire could live there, she murmurs: they could all live close to each other and close to Karina’s parents. Karina’s mom has already started giving Claire some of her jewelry: Deanna insists that she hasn’t worn that necklace in years, but Judith sees the brightness inside the chain-- worn regularly-- and almost objects. Then she notices the sparkle in Claire’s eyes and decides to stay quiet.

After all, having a patchwork family also helps Judith. She can stay out of the public eye and out of I-3’s godawful dorms. Tactically, it’s a smart move: even when she sleeps, she’ll be near a large supply of weapons and ammunition. This is a pragmatic decision, she tells herself. Definitely not influenced by the way Karina’s dad calls her “kiddo,” spars with her, throws out pointers for refining her muay thai form. And absolutely not influenced by the way Karina’s mom hands her a new shirt and pants that she insists are Karina’s from last year, despite the tag she found on the inside of the jeans.

She’s not beginning to like them, Judith insists. She just needs them, tactically. This is strategic, not emotional.

But there’s this one night, a monday, when the treetop office isn’t quite finished and they’re unpacking in these temporary rooms inside the bunker, and Judith stops working to inject herself with estrogen. And the needle shines a little too brightly under the new LED lights and her hand’s shaking and she can’t seem to bring herself to close her eyes and force her hand down. 

It seems like it’s been five minutes before Judith notices Karina, standing in the doorway.

“Need some help?” Karina asks.

“I’m fine,” Judith grunts, but she doesn’t protest when Karina sits next to her and pries the syringe from her fist. 

Karina murmurs that she hates needles too, and that’s just not true, Judith is fine with needles, she’s done this herself plenty of times, she just needs a minute--

But before Judith can say any of this, Karina’s slipped the needle into Judith’s thigh, depressed the plunger, pulled it out, and is opening a band-aid to put onto the skin. And it dawns on Judith that Karina’s not doing this because Judith is helpless or weak. Not because Judith  _ can’t  _ do it on her own. But because Judith  _ doesn’t have to _ do it on her own.

The realization lands like a punch in her gut. 

So they finish the treetop office and Judith and Claire move into their new rooms permanently. Every monday night, Karina slips out of her parents’ house, pads barefoot into Judith’s office, and distracts her with soft conversation till the injection is done. More often than not, Karina will bring a mug of tea, or hot chocolate, or a cookie that her mom sends over. She notices that Deanna Karnes starts baking more often, entirely on Monday afternoons. Sometimes, late at night, she’ll just stare out the window in her office and see the Karnes house all alight, the family moving, silhouetted in the windows. 

After a year, Karina mentions that Corporate hasn’t done anything to fulfil their promise of providing surgery. She does this quietly, gently, on a Monday night after Judith’s injection. She asks if Judith wants surgery. She does this softly, but Judith recognizes a hardness behind her voice: Judith’s heard Karina use this tone only once before, telling a child to come to her instead of wandering around the corner to see her mother’s body. Karina had known the assassin was still in the room but had readied herself to jump in front of the toddler if necessary. This tone, Judith knows, is reserved for when Karina is diplomatic but serious: ready to soothe and kill in equal measure. If Judith gives the word, she knows Karina will move heaven and earth to ensure that she gets surgery.

Karina stresses that this is Judith’s decision, that many trans people don’t want surgery, that she’s perfect just like this. But Judith knows-- has known-- ever since she didn’t die a year and a half ago. She gives the word.

Within twenty-four hours, Karina has sent five dispatches, in demanding but professional language, to Corporate. When they try to deflect, Karina sends them a copy of the written contract that Judith is sure Corporate hoped they’d forgotten about. Even after only a year, Judith knows that Karina has perfected the art of telling Corporate, in professional language, to Go Fuck Itself. She brings all these skills to the table now, and within a month Judith is scheduled for surgery, and Karina’s mom is packing a hospital bag, and Karina’ dad is taking two weeks of vacation time to help with her recovery, and Claire is picking out a new wardrobe that won’t irritate her scars, and Karina is moving her things out to the treehouse so Judith can sleep in Karina’s room, where there aren’t any stairs to strain the incisions.

They all ride to the hospital together, and when Judith wakes up they’re there, all of them, Karina and Mr. and Mrs. Karnes and Claire, and Judith looks down at her body and almost--  _ almost  _ bursts into tears.

And it happens for the first time when Judith is fresh out of surgery and still groggy from anaesthesia, she calls Mrs. Karnes  _ mom _ , does it soft and quick, and the word slips out before she can stop it. She thinks-- hopes?-- that Deanna didn’t hear it. But the next day Mrs. Karnes slips a note into her hand, and she reads the pristine cursive: 

_ I’m proud to be your mom. _

Judith insists that she doesn’t care, but crumples the note and shoves it beneath her blankets. That night, when Deanna has coaxed Karina and Claire out of the room to get a few hours’ sleep, she pulls the note out and stares at it.

And she can’t hide it in time when Mr. Karnes wakes up from his place on the couch, and it seems like he already knows what it says, because he smiles and clears his throat, rubbing the back of his neck like he does before he says something risky.

“If you want--  _ only  _ if you want-- but I would-- I don’t mind--” he stammers, and Judith pins him with a glare.

“What?” she says, and hopes her voice sounds tough. But she hasn’t used it in awhile, and it comes out more like a croak.

Martin Karnes looks at the wall, then back at her. “I was gonna say that, if you want someone to call dad, I wouldn’t mind.” He pauses. “I mean to say, I’d be honored. If you want.”

Judith considers this for a moment. Her own father, the head of the Moscow mob, had all but disowned her when she came out. He’d beat her, insisted that his  _ son  _ would succeed him as leader of the Russian underworld. He’d pushed Judith into a chair, buzzed her hair, yelled her deadname at her, then thrown her out into the snowy streets when she’d refused to answer to it anymore.

The concept of  _ father  _ is odd to her, fraught with conflict and memories she’s focused on avenging. A father’s love is conditional, she knows, dependent on her being a good  _ son _ . Her father’s love, such as it was, threw fists in her face, bruised her cheekbones, sprayed her eyes with spittle when he screamed. 

She’s not sure she wants a father.

But she remembers the first time she met Martin Karnes-- in private, in a shadowy room much like this one in the hospital, the day after she’d told Corporate that she wanted Karina to work with her. Martin was angry, she knew, from the flush in his cheeks and the way his lips pursed when he finished speaking. But his anger looked so different from Judith’s birth father’s-- he’d been gentle, speaking quietly, pointing his glares not at Judith but at the Corporate building around her. She’s seen him interact with Karina, his daughter, how he is soft with her. He treats her like she is his equal and his confidante. And Judith wants that, wants the easy way she trusts him.

“Okay, dad,” she murmurs, half embarrassed that she’s shown herself vulnerable like this.

But Martin Karnes just smiles and pats her on the arm. “I’m proud of my daughters, all of them.”

_ Proud _ . Of his  _ daughters _ . Judith is almost certain she’ll break into tears, but instead she just sinks into the bed with a feeling of relief. She never expected to find family, not here, in the middle of Missouri with an impulsive chemist, a mentally ill diplomat, and her parents. 

She sleeps so well that night that she wakes up wondering what year it is.

Michael Bell arrives four days after Judith comes back from leave, and Judith hates him. Who is this intruder, this  _ man  _ invading her family? Nevermind that he’s the weapons expert Karina’s been talking about recruiting for months. Nevermind that he and Claire hit it off instantly, jointly upgrading Claire’s lab till it practically glows with all the new tech. No, Judith hates him because she has just found her parents, her real parents, not the stupid abusive ones who share her DNA. She hates Michael because Claire has started elbowing  _ him  _ in the ribs instead of her, and Karina has started making Michael taste the new teas she gets from some obscure online shops, and nevermind that Judith approved his transfer, she just wants him  _ gone _ . She hates him more when Martin calls him  _ son  _ and he recoils, as if in disgust. 

_ You don’t throw my parents’ love away _ , she thinks, and almost punches Michael right then and there. 

But Karina is gentle and persistent, and points out the ways Michael has helped them: he’s organized Claire’s cords and connectors, built sturdier bookshelves for Karina, customized Judith’s guns. Judith begrudgingly gives him permission to attend their group hangs after her weekly injections, and Michael brings snacks, a franken-dessert cobbled together from waffles, whipped cream, ice cream, and gummy bears. It melts before any of them are able to eat it, but Judith sees the peace offering for what it is. She figures that, if the Karnes family can expand to fit her in, she can at least find room in her life for this idiot with the bulbous nose. It takes months for Judith to become easy around him, but when she does it’s wonderful: their sparring sessions become a highlight of her week, and all their tech is kept shiny and freshly upgraded. Michael also challenges Judith more than Claire or Karina do: he’ll call her out on her bullshit instead of just smiling and nodding along. This kind of combative friendship is new, she admits, but not entirely unwelcome. And then, at the end of a long day, she and Michael can steal one of Mr. Karnes’s bottles of vodka and laugh at the drama Karina and Claire obsess over.

Karina and Claire start dating and it’s breezy, the way they shift from friendship to romance. Judith admires the way Claire’s hands will drift over Karina’s ass during a meeting, or how Karina will kiss Claire quickly before heading out of the office. Judith’s never needed sex, she knows: sex is superfluous, a chemical high that leads to a deceptive feeling of intimacy. But she could do romance, could see herself falling the way Karina and Claire fall for each other every day: with little touches and inside jokes and smiles that turn to giggles. She sees the way Michael looks at her, like she could knock the stars from their perches and he’d still admire her. But she doesn’t see him like that, and Karina tells her that he’s content to let Judith be an unattainable crush. So she goes on a few dates, but nothing clicks and she likes the term  _ platonic life partner _ more and more as she looks at her little family. So, just as easily as they’d started, Karina and Claire decide to remain friends, Judith and Michael remain an arm's length apart, and they spend their days chasing down murderers and spying on drug lords.

Judith even lets Karina persuade her to try estrogen capsules instead of the injections, and she’s surprised at how much she likes it now that she’s (mostly) grown past the need to punish her own body with needles. There are the nights, of course: the times that the knives are sharp and the guns are hard and she spends more time pummeling punching bags than sleeping. But, mostly, with the help of her family and the therapist Karina forced her to see, Judith no longer wants to make her skin suffer. Instead, she lets Karina and Claire drag her along on their spa days and is only half serious when she mocks the sheet masks Claire forces onto her face.

They begin to gain notoriety in the company: Judith is nominated for Agent of the Year, Michael gains a double black diamond weapons certification, and Karina appears in a few goodwill campaigns. They all brace themselves, knowing that a famous spy is a dead spy. But Corporate keeps them abreast of any security risks and they get an upgrade to their office, blast-proofing the elevator and upgrading their security systems. They even get a handling team at Corporate to make sure they stay safe. This feels like the calm before the storm, a high that they all know they can’t ride forever. 

But the storm doesn’t hit. Michael, always resourceful, scrubs them from public records whenever possible. Karina still does press conferences but is sure to not draw attention to their little family. Claire makes the news more for her socialite behavior and Twitter beef with the President of Guatemala than for her work as an agent. They begin to enter high espionage society: missions disguised as high-profile charity work, like serving as an armed escort for orphans leaving war-torn cities. They get invited to galas-- the kind where everyone there, even the host, has a silenced handgun hidden under a sweeping tulle skirt or tucked inside a bulletproof suit jacket. 

It’s at one of these galas that Karina meets Connor Falsworth and, looking back, Judith knows that this meeting was the beginning of the end. Their meeting starts a role reversal decades in the making: from the peak of Karina’s career to the peak of Connor’s, from Karina being I-3’s poster child to Connor being the same. And in the middle of it all, these two people whose love is so bright it could dim the sun.

Years later, after Karina’s limbic system frays her memories and Michael’s body is decaying in the ground and the treetop office is a pile of debris, Judith looks back on this golden age. She’s heard all the stories, not just about her unit, but about the other transgender people, and all of them die. Judith survives. This is her legacy, she thinks, her final and most bittersweet revenge: she survives, outlives Karina and Claire and Michael, survives Martin and Deanna Karnes, even outlives Connor. She sips her vodka and pokes a long, needly middle finger into the sky.

I-3 betrays them. The company that pulled them together, that trained them, decides that they are too much of a liability to keep around. They are old now, and traumatized, and  _ oh so _ tired. And I-3 has found other children to celebrate and admire and ultimately throw away. 

They start dying, one by one.

Michael is lost in the betrayal. He is labeled a traitor and tortured. After a month, they stop trying to get any information from him, instead using him as their own living voodoo doll. Connor visits him, in secret, several times: at first to offer an escape, then to offer a merciful death. Michael refuses both. He tells Connor, who tells Judith, that he has always known there would someday be a situation he couldn’t smooth talk his way out of. So he is silent. His jokes have dried on his tongue. Michael stays alive out of sheer stubborn force of will, for almost three months. He lives in I-3’s prisons, not speaking, barely blinking: he lives so long that even their torturers are ashamed to touch him. Connor gains custody of Michael’s body and he, Claire, and Judith carry it out into the woods, burning it like Michael always joked they should do. They stand, silent, in front of the bonfire. The smell of burnt flesh makes Judith want to vomit, but instead she takes the flask Claire hands her and drinks half of it. She passes it to Connor, who doesn’t drink. Instead, he throws the liquid into the fire, and it goes up in flames like a tiny explosion.

Karina crumbles, her mind folding in on itself. Connor stays with her, and for years they stumble along together. But finally, their role reversal is complete: Karina is brilliant but distracted, can barely string together a paragraph without losing track of her own limbs. She is the mad detective, the girl who was driven insane by her own genius. Connor has learned Karina’s brilliance from her and carries it within himself, gentle and bright. They run jobs together until ultimately it’s their togetherness that destroys them: Karina decides her life is expendable and she collapses, tucking the bomb into her stomach as she curls around it. She saves Connor’s life. The bomb  _ (of course it is a bomb) _ tears her ribcage apart with a scream. 

Connor follows soon after: without Karina, he is unmoored and he takes jobs with more and more risk. He accidentally survives for almost a year until his luck finally runs out. In the end it’s a bomb that gets him too: a building collapses and it’s nine days before they find his body in the debris, both legs crushed under a ceiling beam and his skin shrunken, lips chapped. His mouth is completely dry, and his tongue has cracked from dehydration. The coroner’s report says  _ liver failure _ but Judith knows the truth: trapped, breathing dust, he must have survived for at least six days before the lack of water shut down his organs. Judith and Claire don’t get his body: it is too mangled from days under the rubble, and the local authorities have carted it to the morgue before they can pull it away. He’s buried in a mass grave with the other victims who could not be identified or had no family to notify. Judith and Claire attend the memorial service for the nameless victims. Afterward, they take Karina’s ashes from Connor’s house and bring them to a blufftop, the one where Karina would sit some mornings to sip from a thermos of tea and watch the sun rise. They scatter the ashes there. Claire insists-- argues-- yells-- that they should leave a plaque or a marker, some sign that Karina and Connor existed. But ultimately Claire falls silent, just picking a fern leaf and laying it there on the ground. After Claire’s gone, Judith looks back just in time to see the leaf, blowing-- stuttering-- skipping off the clifftop.

After that it’s Claire. She hangs on for a few years yet, but ultimately a routine doctor’s visit shows that the stress and caffeine that have kept her alive are finally killing her. She’s inches from a heart attack. At forty. Claire rages, destroys her home; Judith shuts herself in her office for days and doesn’t eat. They don’t speak to each other for a week. Finally, Judith is able to drink some water and send Claire a single text:

_ We all deserved better. _

Claire reads it but doesn’t respond until Judith arrives at her door two days later, with a bottle of vodka in hand. Claire’s mugs are all broken, their pieces scattered on the floor against the wall where she’s thrown them. So the two of them drink out of the broken stubs. The sharp edges spear them in the lips.

Judith doesn’t remember if they talk or if they stay silent while they drink. In the end it doesn’t matter. Claire’s house is wrecked so she sleeps on the floor in Judith’s office. Judith sleeps a few doors away but she still doesn’t hear the heart attack that kills Claire. 

The office is gone. Judith burns it down with Claire’s body still inside. So it’s just Judith, alone, in the bunker that Karina’s dad built for them. It’s her office now, and her home. She’d always imagined that it would be the seven of them: Judith, Claire, Michael, Karina, Connor, Mr. and Mrs. Karnes. But the bunker, like Judith, outlasts them all: friends and enemies both. And, like Judith, it carries with it these ghostly bodies.

But the ghosts are better than empty space, and echoes are better than silence. And Judith is alive. It’s not much, but it’s what she’s got.


End file.
